


She Who Haunts the Dead City

by cherryjam (blueskull)



Series: FFXIV Write 2020 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Hyur Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Selectively Mute Main Character, but the wol isn't a wol in this, so hades is now a wol, where hades was sundered instead of convocation member 14, while wol is an ascian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26318362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueskull/pseuds/cherryjam
Summary: Fate will surely follow you wherever you go.
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Series: FFXIV Write 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913422
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	1. Crux

**Author's Note:**

> This originally started as "Crux" for the FFXIVwrite2020 prompts but accidentally spawned its own small AU series.
> 
> I cannot take credit for the title (my friend's suggestion).

The sundering rends her world into pieces, tearing apart her friends and loved ones but for some reason she remains, she with Elidibus and Lahabrea.

She stumbles, confused, through a land just barely familiar, more than slightly alien to her, formless like smoke. There is so much and yet nothing at all, all at once.

Nothing is _right_. These -- creatures -- wallow like babes bereft of succor, stumbling as blind and helpless as she, and no matter how Persephone tries, she cannot put the pieces back together. This is a puzzle that does not fit, a nightmare she wishes she could wake from.

The others grow more and more desperate -- but she is a sentimental fool. No matter how much she balks at current affairs, she cannot -- will not -- 

_We are going to use livestock. Non-sentients, you see?_

_How does that justify anything?!_

The first and last time she had ever screamed at him, tears of frustration and confusion and agony that she could not understand him piercing her like a thousand knives.

The memories tear into her, make her gasp and clutch at her chest even as she tries to force them out. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so stubborn, this would have never happened. Perhaps if she had simply given in, this --

No, no, this summoning had nothing to do with their argument, nothing at all.

No matter how much she pleads them, they will not listen. There is beauty in this world, certainly, but it feels hollow to her with faces who are achingly familiar but who slip through her fingers like sand, unable to ever touch them. She will never do as they do. She will never take a body not her own. She will never indulge them.

So she retreats, into a forgotten corner of the world. Buildings were always _his_ specialty, and how beautiful they were -- hers can only be a stark imitation. (It is all only a pale imitation.) But her simulacrums are larger than life, expressive, they wear their counterfeited features as if they _belong_ to them.

It is not cold or artificial or plastic so long as she pretends not to see it, so long as Persephone writes those stories she was always so fond of. So long as she never steps foot from here, she will never have to see it. So long as she never notices the way, eventually, the conversations and occurrences repeat throughout the years, she will never see it.

At night, she clutches her crystal to her breast, wishing dearly upon stars that everything may go back to normal. That all may return as it was.

Ah, but that is the crux of the issue, is it not?

There is no going back.


	2. The Colour of Soul

There is something strangely -- familiar about this city.

Perhaps it’s the tall walls that remind him of Garlemald, or the odd, swirling spires that corkscrew away into the dark depths of the sky. Whatever the reason — he almost feels as if he _knows_ this place.

Thus, Solus does not see any particular reason he should remove his gunblade. It remains strapped to his back, his soul crystal pressed into its hilt.

Not even the scions have accompanied him to this place. He went alone — and besides, precious few things in this world can pose a threat to him. He’s wary but not overly so.

But there’s nothing here. Even as he steps further along the streets, the only things that pass him by are — strange, artificial creatures. He knew immediately upon setting his eyes upon them that they were not alive, not _real..._ they have no hue to speak of, after all. They are as colourless as the rest of this ancient, abandoned city.

A glimmer catches his eye — a spark of something brilliant. So caught off guard is he that his armour hisses as he whirls to see the gleam _properly_. The bare hints of a soul —

Ah, there _is_ someone living here after all.

Cowled and masked, like the rest, but unmistakably _living_. And the colour —

He’s never seen a hue like this before. Green and blue, the colours meld and swirl before his eyes, more vibrant and more intense than any soul he has ever laid eyes upon before.

“Who are you?” he asks, unthinkingly, as he approaches the small tree they stand beneath, framed by the faint light of the lamps looming above. The figure stiffens, shrinks from him. He thinks he can see eyes of the selfsame colour staring at him in bewilderment.

Then one of their hands lifts. Solus does not even for a moment assume they might attack him — for if they were hostile in the first place, they would have already done something.

His assumption is correct. Instead of producing a weapon or anything of the sort, they —

Write in the air.

The colourful, tangled words are not in any language that he knows, but for some reason he understands them completely.

> _You can see me?_

He resists the urge to scoff in amusement.

“Of course I can. Why wouldn’t I?”

There’s a pause for a moment as he looks away toward another passing figure, dull and grey.

“You’re the only one with colour here, after all.”

It makes them so much more brightly stark against everything else --

But the words seem to unnerve his strange, masked companion. They recoil from him -- even with the mask he can tell their facial expression is perturbed. There’s the barest hint of hesitation, before they turn and flee further into the hollowed bones of the dead city.

“Ah -- wait -- ”

But they do not heed him, and even though he gives chase, they vanish into the darkness of an alcove, their soul along with them.


	3. Perception

Ah —

No one has ever seen her before.

When was the last time...? So long ago...

Clutching at her wildly beating heart, she takes in a deep breath as she tries to calm herself. Sinking to the ground, she closes her eyes against the tears she feels collecting within them.

She’s fled to the small garden near the bureau, throwing herself down the hill near the building she’d escaped from her guest. Her oddly familiar-looking guest...

It’s almost like deja vu, what she feels looking at him. And to be seen again --

The last time...the last time, before the sundering...no one asides from Lahabrea and Elidibus had ever seen her. No one had ever talked to her. For so long she had simply watched, before she had retreated to this place to be with her friends.

(Though they weren’t really, they could never be.)

And then there had simply been...days of looking at stars that were not here, not real besides, mere fancies and whimsies of her own mind because --

They couldn’t exist, not anymore. Not as they were.

Persephone had resigned herself to this half-life, this delusion of hers. What confuses her most about her guest is his _face_ \--

“Ah, there you are.”

His voice scatters her thoughts like pebbles.

He sounds vaguely out of breath as he casually stands before her.

“Why did you run away?”

She merely shakes her head as a reply. There are too many emotions swirling within her to answer properly -- the trembling of her heart, the clenching of her throat that wouldn’t let words out even if she had chosen to speak verbally.

There is just too much.

There is so much that she doesn’t even realise when he reaches a hand to touch her.


	4. Touch

He reaches a hand to touch their shoulder.

And yet —

His fingers go straight through them, as if they were nothing more than a projected image, or wisps of smoke.

“What...?” There is no reply other than a slouch of the shoulders, an inward curling to make themself seem smaller. Solus’ mind races as he tries to put this puzzle together, tries to discern why on earth they might be _incorporeal_.

He tries, again, to touch them, to no avail. They are not — solid. Not alive? And yet...the vibrancy of their soul cannot be denied.

It doesn’t make any sense —

“Are you a voidsent...?” he asks after a moment with narrowed golden eyes. Perhaps that might make sense — at least in some respect. Something unexplainable and strange...

The masked and cloaked figure upturns their face to look at him, fixing him with those green eyes again. Why do they look so incorrigibly _sad_?

Their head shakes, and he thinks he can catch sight of wisps of dark hair beneath the cloth covering their head.

> _I am not a voidsent. I suppose...ghost would be a more apt description._

The man hums lowly under his breath, head tilted slightly to the side as he reads. What curious letters --

But curiouser still their answer.

“So you’re a lost soul who can’t cross over?” He supposes that makes sense for their...predicament. And why they haunt this strange place deep in the caves of Thanalan. He would have never supposed an entire city were in here. Nor, he suspects, would anyone else.

Why, he hadn’t even realised he had come here until he had quite literally stumbled into it. A trick of the light, a pulling on the aether surrounding the area -- he recalls such a trick being used at Rhalgr’s Reach.

This place was never meant to be found by anyone.

He clicks his tongue, fits a hand to his hip as he leans his weight on one leg, regarding his companion.

“You’re all alone here, are you?” Solus isn’t quite sure what possesses him to ask, or ascertain, but he does anyway. All they give him is a slow, uncertain nod. “Well, perfect. I get tired of other people, you know?”

The blank stare he receives tells him most certainly not.

\-- It would make sense, after all, with no one else here. No one living, anyway.

But for _him_...the colours of the world -- no, the souls of the rest of this world are enough to give him a headache. He can neither turn off nor entirely block out his _vision_ , his curse to forever see everything stained in the colours of those who walk before and beside him. There are precious few places devoid of life like this.

And their glow is strangely pleasant.

“Would you mind if I came back here?” he asks after a moment, casting his gaze away from them to the architecture of the buildings surrounding them. “I won’t bother you, I assure you. This simply seems like a nice place to think, is all...”

A place to get away that isn’t an inn room or his own head.

It takes him a second to realise that he can’t wait for a verbal response. He twists to look at his masked “friend” again, and their hand lifts to give him their answer.

> _I suppose you may...if you wish._

He’s somewhat surprised. He’d expected a rebuttal. But this answer pleases him regardless.

“Excellent.”


	5. Déjà Vu

Her dreams have been less vibrant lately. And unfortunately, she thinks she has a good understanding of why.

It is -- Solus’...fault...?

He comes to her with tales of the world above, of “false gods” conquered and slain, a revolution harried forth here and there. His speech of _Ifrit_ makes her remember someone else, briefly, a pang at the back of her throat as she thinks of his current state.

Solus speaks as casually as snapping his fingers, the events nothing especially exhilarating for him, but he has a willing listener regardless. Though sometimes, he arrives to say nothing at all, a book in tow or perhaps not. He seems to find something of her city comforting, despite his avoidance of her other creations.

Occasionally, he gives her a look, one that makes her think of times long gone, an expression not even her simulacrum can replicate. For he is not looking at her, but something around her.

Once, she had asked.

> _What are you looking at?_

It had taken him a moment to respond, as if startled she had asked.

“Your colour, of course. Oh, I suppose you don’t know -- mm, soul sight is what I call it. Do you know of it? I can see others’ souls around them -- like an aura, if you will.”

> _Someone I once knew had something similar. But I have never had it myself, no._

Their faces are not the same, precisely; there are different...imperfections --

No, perhaps different features, simply...?

\-- And yet she finds Solus’ face becoming superimposed over Hades’ in her memory. Or is it the other way around? Even his mannerisms, the way he speaks, are similar...

She hates that the spectre she’s made of him can no longer assuage her. Her days have gone from blissful numbness to an aching _wait, wait, waiting_ for his return.

“What is your name? I don’t think I’ve ever asked, actually. My apologies.”

For a moment, she thinks of the others, how they only speak to one another with their titles. Their true names lost to time and a fading memory, corrupted by years of never hearing anyone else utter them ever again.

Her hand lifts slowly, as she thinks too long on what to say. The title or the name/ How would it be for him to say it? For someone else? She writes before she can come to a proper decision, but perhaps that is her fingers deciding for her.

“Perse...phone...?” He repeats the name carefully, his eyebrows furrowing as he stares at her writing before it dissipates.

But time seems to stop the moment he says it aloud. The breath stops in whatever is left of her lungs, her hand slowly falling to her side, trembling.

It is like --

Ah, she cannot look at him.

Without a word, she turns her back on him and flees into the depths of the city, putting brick and rock between them so that not even her colour might betray her, no matter how he calls for her.


	6. Doppelganger

He itches to return to that place. It is always at the back of his mind -- to return there. To them.

Of few words, their presence is nonetheless comforting. Occasionally, he finds himself curious of their true nature, or purpose -- but they are never, ever unwelcoming to him. Quite the contrary. If he did not enjoy their company, it would not be at the forefront of his mind, or at the very least at the back of it.

Thoughtlessly, he fidgets with his gunblade as he sits upon one of the stone benches. His ghostly comrade fidgets nearby, occasionally running fingers along that hood as if to make sure it is still there.

Solus’ curiosity of them has never been satiated, though he knows little about them. Still, it feels rude to ask. And yet...if they are a ghost, as they so claim -- would it not be prudent to question? To...

“Tell me, what ails you? ...Persephone.” He quite likes saying that name. The name of his so very flighty "friend”.

\-- The first time he had read that name, they had all but fled from him. To this day, he wonders why. They have never explained it, nor have they reacted similarly since, apart from an odd flinch or twitch here or there.

Regardless, if they are a ghost, there is something...he should be able to do. He _is_ the Warrior of Light, after all.

The tilt of their head is quizzical as they regard him from beneath their pale mask.

> _What do you mean?_

“You can’t pass on.” He shrugs, sheathing his weapon. “So there must be something you must want to do. Or _need_ to do. At the very least...” He turns his yellow gaze up to gesture to the stone buildings around them, that fake starry sky that disguises the rocks above. “I was wondering if there was something I could do. For that.”

No matter how he tries to phrase it, it sounds uncouth, as if he had asked them what they were. And yet he cannot think of any other way he might say it.

> _...I’m afraid there is nothing you can do._

They do not breach the subject again, no matter how much he wants to.

The false stars are bright above him as he walks up the pathway to the world above, his mind elsewhere. He’s left Persephone behind in the recesses of the city. Briefly, he wonders how it would be if they were to travel with him, a quiet colourful ghost. Ah, but perhaps that would be even lonelier for them than this fake city...

He’s not paying attention to where he walks, and his ankle twists painfully on uneven pavement. He grimaces as he stumbles briefly to his knees. Whilst he’s not in any danger of being attacked here, his pride is still bruised, and he’s at least thankful that Persephone is not here to see this disaster.

Exhaling loudly, he’s about to simply continue on, when he notices one of the spectres has stopped to look at him. Solus does not typically look at the faces of the phantoms here. And yet now, he cannot stop himself --

The same golden eyes as his catch his gaze.

And is that a red _Ascian_ mask beneath the cowl...?


End file.
